Oculus Rift - Development Kit 2

[MSCoder610]

Facebook's interest in Oculus is a bit unexpected but I think it makes sense. If you take the userbase of Facebook, and cross it with Oculus and an app similar to Second Life, then you have a lot more people potentially interested in VR / socializing in VR. Casual gaming / advertising / etc. can all fit into something like that pretty easily.

I think everyone is more disappointed from a gamer's perspective, and is just hoping that Facebook's social aspirations for VR don't overshadow the gaming part of it that everyone's been interested in (and developing for) so far.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Notch announced on twitter that he's pulling minecraft for Oculus development, several devs in the forum over at Oculus have said they're now pulling support. Quite a number of DK2 preorders have been cancelled.

I was going to get the DK2, but naaah, Carmack and Co selling out, Zuckerberg becoming the next EA just buying up all the talent to ruin stuff in the name of profit, no thanks.

I'd rather give my money to Sony, or just burn it for no reason, quite frankly.

 

[ImpulsE69]

That sucks...but yea.

Of course..if you were in Oculus shoes...would you pass up $2B? I think not..so..I suppose kudos to them.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Well with the FB news I just lost any interest I had in getting this kit. I'll wait and see what the outcome is. I do think this will be an interesting item in the future, but not with FB at the helm. Their ideas and direction doesn't seem to fit my idea of what this is for which means waiting for 3rd parties to make rogue uses.

Well, Sony is creating a VR headset for the PS4 so there's that. I just think FB as a company will push it for usages outside gaming and pull it away from what it was trying to do.

 

[CrimsonWolf]

This is why we can't have nice things.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

The sheer amount of fear mongering and doomsayers is amusing. This is a good thing, as it means OR will have the capital to push out a better product faster and/or remain competitive against new entrants into the market.

From Mark:
"Immersive gaming will be the first, and Oculus already has big plans here that won't be changing and we hope to accelerate. The Rift is highly anticipated by the gaming community, and there's a lot of interest from developers in building for this platform. We're going to focus on helping Oculus build out their product and develop partnerships to support more games. Oculus will continue operating independently within Facebook to achieve this." -FB Post Announcement

Additionally, I'm obviously not as jaded as quite a few of your (obviously) are. There are additional uses for VR tech beyond gaming, and I'm glad it looks like FB will be enabling the OR team to start exploring that while still delivering the OR.

 

[Red Storm]

I can't help but wonder why Facebook would possibly be interested in the Oculus. They're not a gaming company and it really has no other use beyond that. Instagram and WhatsApp made sense given their industry. I always get the feeling that Zuck doesn't really know what he's doing and every business decision he makes is little more than a roll of the dice. They seem to be blowing a lot of cash on these startups.

Uh no, gaming is just one thing that VR can be used for. It has great potential in entertainment, media, education, communication, etc.

It was very smart of Facebook to buy Oculus, I just hate that they were the ones to do it.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

The sheer amount of fear mongering and doomsayers is amusing.

Yeah yeah I've read all the PR on this nonsense, you do realise that's just pre-written content by the PR department to release to the public in order to stop the value of the product tanking during the transition phase between ownership.

They can do whatever they want with the product they completely own it, they can lie through their teeth to everyone and completely change their behaviour last moment, why would you trust this?

People are fear mongering because we've seen this time and time again in the last 10 years of gaming as EA and other large corps hoover up promising IP and then literally destroy them in the name of making cash, it's where microtransactions have come from, DLC, pay to win, pay to wait, everything bad about gaming has come from large public owned corps who are run by the board members who make decisions to make money rather than delivery value.

So yeah there's fear mongers and doomsayers because it's completely reasonable given the state of gaming right now, no one dumps $2Bn into a project and just leaves it alone as normal, they bring in a team of people to think up ways to increase profit margins, capture user data, and lock down the platform as much as possible to control usage.

 

[Paul98]

Though still not sure, and it doesn't sit well with me but that is due to past experiences with large companies buying up small companies. This will allow developers who make games for the Oculus rift to know that their hard work will have a large audience. They shouldn't have to wait many years for large scale VR adoption.

 

[QuantumPion]

I'm not happy about facebook acquiring Oculus but I am happy they are getting a lot of capital to work with. I think most people fearing 3d pop-up adds and retinal scanning are overreacting a bit. Then again, this is kind of a big FU to the original kickstarters. They should all get stock shares or something.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

Yeah yeah I've read all the PR on this nonsense, you do realise that's just pre-written content by the PR department to release to the public in order to stop the value of the product tanking during the transition phase between ownership.

They can do whatever they want with the product they completely own it, they can lie through their teeth to everyone and completely change their behaviour last moment, why would you trust this?

People are fear mongering because we've seen this time and time again in the last 10 years of gaming as EA and other large corps hoover up promising IP and then literally destroy them in the name of making cash, it's where microtransactions have come from, DLC, pay to win, pay to wait, everything bad about gaming has come from large public owned corps who are run by the board members who make decisions to make money rather than delivery value.

So yeah there's fear mongers and doomsayers because it's completely reasonable given the state of gaming right now, no one dumps $2Bn into a project and just leaves it alone as normal, they bring in a team of people to think up ways to increase profit margins, capture user data, and lock down the platform as much as possible to control usage.

FB = EA now? Or are we jumping on the Cool Kid Bandwagon that all corporations are TEH EVIL™?

Now, if I start reading that JC and core team are packing up and moving to Aruba post-signing, then I will be worried, but for right now, I see additional capital to improve the OR. More capital = more R&D, better component sourcing, etc, etc.

FB also has a vested interest now in wanting the OR to succeed, an early death in gaming application will possibly turn off other applications for the tech / make it more expensive. Believe it or not, when you invest in something, you generally want a decent ROI.

 

[SLU Aequitas]

I'm not happy about facebook acquiring Oculus but I am happy they are getting a lot of capital to work with. I think most people fearing 3d pop-up adds and retinal scanning are overreacting a bit. Then again, this is kind of a big FU to the original kickstarters. They should all get stock shares or something.

Generally my sentiment, although I'm not as pessimistic right now. As for the "FU" to backers, how so? Kickstarter is NOT an investment, it's cash now for a product (possibly) later. People erroneously viewing it as an investment tool really don't have a leg to stand on, other than possible jealousy since if they HAD been an investor, they'd be pretty damn happy right now

 

[Aikouka]

Zuckerberg talks at length about how Facebook plans to make Oculus a platform for "completely new kinds of experiences," and gaming is only the first one. Examples he suggests include sitting courtside at a big game, studying in a classroom with other students virtually or getting a face to face doctor consultation from anywhere.

Hmm I've been bouncing around the idea of developing a platform like this for months. Mine actually started with thinking about concerts and such, and how you could effectively bring someone to the event.

Although, if people are really cancelling their pre-orders, maybe that means I'll get one faster! :awe:

 

[norseamd]

kickstarter is donations not investments

still there is supposed to be a sense of trust

 

[SMOGZINN]

The sheer amount of fear mongering and doomsayers is amusing.

Facebook could have developed for the OR just like anyone else, so why buy it? Hardware is not where the money is at, this thing is going to be expensive enough that to get adoption the margins will have to be razor thin, and as soon as it does start to get decent adoption every panel company out there is going to release their version of it driving margins down even further. So why would Facebook decide to not just invest in it, but buy it outright?

They have some plan to make money off this that requires them to have control of the hardware development. It is the only thing that makes sense.

 

[mizzou]

I'm really confused at how an advertising business wants to get involved in computer peripherals?

The second life thing makes sense but....this thing is going to cost around $300.00 at retail.

In an age where people are still computer illterate and see people who play games as nerds...what makes anyone think it will be adopted by mom&dad using facebook?

Or perhaps....this will be a COMPLETELY different wing of the business



Does this violate any kickstarter campaign donations??

 

[mizzou]

Also...just imagine all the offers Oculus was getting. I bet Microsoft was one of them. To go with FB is going to be interesting.... I don't know what to compare this to at all.

It's rare we get a garage tech creation that turns into a billion dollar corporate venture.

 

[Mogadon]

Apparently Mark just finished reading Ready Player One a couple of weeks ago.

http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-O...ady+player+one

 

[PrincessFrosty]

FB = EA now? Or are we jumping on the Cool Kid Bandwagon that all corporations are TEH EVIL™?

FB and EA are run the same way, they're owned by investors who sit around in board meetings and decide the future of the business and how it operates. All they care about is increasing the stock/share value of the business to increase their investments.

So yes, functionally the reasons behind EA's dev studio acquisitions and subsequent death of that studios intelectual property to create short term profits is the big corps MO.

While an injection of cash is great for Oculus, remember that cash is DEBT, the investors want their return plus interest and returning 2Bn in debt means yet more boardrooms of suits who are detached from gaming sitting around thinking up ideas to further monetise the hardware past simply selling units, will they force ads to people or track everyone for marketing purposes, I'm sure it will be something extremely distasteful and annoy everyone or violate our privacy in some way, that's what everyone is thinking right now.

 

[mizzou]

I'll trust Sony with delivering an experience versus advertising Juggernaut FB

But who am I to complain...maybe this will get these out the door faster and make it even better of an experience.

 

[MSCoder610]

Palmer (Oculus creator) has been responding to some posts on Reddit, there's a little interesting info there -
http://www.reddit.com/user/palmerluckey

I'm curious to see whatever news they announce for content soon. There's been a fair number of Kickstarters lately for games claiming to support Oculus, or designed specifically for Oculus, but quite a few of them have struggled with funds. (Two I've followed for a long time now and I think should be good first-person exploration games, Xing and Gallery: Six Elements, both were under their Kickstarter goals until a couple of days before the campaign ended. Another, Crashed Lander, which already had a good demo showing VR gameplay that everyone seemed to like, made around $500 from their IndieGoGo campaign I think.)
Most developers working on Oculus games right now are mostly working on blind faith that the marketshare will expand and they'll be able to recoup some of the costs they've put into development.

 

[mizzou]

Notch announced on twitter that he's pulling minecraft for Oculus development, several devs in the forum over at Oculus have said they're now pulling support. Quite a number of DK2 preorders have been cancelled.

I was going to get the DK2, but naaah, Carmack and Co selling out, Zuckerberg becoming the next EA just buying up all the talent to ruin stuff in the name of profit, no thanks.

I'd rather give my money to Sony, or just burn it for no reason, quite frankly.

http://notch.net/2014/03/virtual-reality-is-going-to-change-the-world/

"I definitely want to be a part of VR, but I will not work with Facebook. Their motives are too unclear and shifting, and they haven’t historically been a stable platform. There’s nothing about their history that makes me trust them, and that makes them seem creepy to me.

And I did not chip in ten grand to seed a first investment round to build value for a Facebook acquisition."

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Palmer (Oculus creator) has been responding to some posts on Reddit, there's a little interesting info there.

The only problem being that the things he's saying he cannot guarantee, he no longer owns the company, Facebook does, they can remove him and install and CEO they like and make any future choices they like.

This is damage control and most of Reddit isn't falling for it considering the negative votes most of his comments have, people know he has no way of guaranteeing what he's saying.

On and also, here's somoene smashing their Rift because of their news, harsh language warning - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l5OAgSDdIvo

 

[BladeVenom]

I'll trust Sony with delivering an experience versus advertising Juggernaut FB

But who am I to complain...maybe this will get these out the door faster and make it even better of an experience.

With Sony however you'll get 10 layers of DRM, and the PS4 will be their first, and maybe only priority.

DRM vs. Logging into Facebook every time you want to play a game. :hmm:

Maybe another company will come along and create a 3rd choice.

 

[Nvidiaguy07]

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